Every now and then, I get this itch to drop everything, change my hair, and become a dancing gay Brooklyn bartender à la Coyote Ugly, never mind the fact that I can’t dance. I thought I might be alone in my disputatious daydreams until I heard Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” The rising pop starlet has been charting her takeover since signing with Atlantic Records as a teen, and the dusty yet decadent single is a promising sign of what’s to come. In a rhinestone cowboy hat, Roan starts off slow with visions of “a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” letting the soft keys give way to a triumphant electronic chorus reminiscent of Kacey Musgraves’s “High Horse.” Her voice reads as hallowed as the halls she sings about, and there’s a palpable electricity in its glitzy video, as she gives a stadium-ready performance to a group of bored barflies. Add in a couple of cameos from RuPaul’s Drag Race legends like Meatball and Porkchop, and she’s got me already booking my ticket to L.A. —Carson Mlnarik
